How Vinicius Junior became the 'Neymar' Real Madrid so desperately craved

Depending on who you ask, the arrival of Vinicius Junior at Real Madrid was either the result of Florentino Pérez’s obsession with Lionel Messi, or his obsession with Neymar. Perhaps it was both. Either way, Real’s all-powerful president wanted something that Barcelona already had - and he saw it in an untested 16-year-old from the streets of Rio de Janeiro.

Pérez had missed out on the signing of Neymar, who moved from Santos to Barcelona in 2013, and his failure to land the great talent of Brazilian football was a source of genuine angst. Real do not like to be snubbed, and Pérez made it clear that it could not happen again: when the next Neymar came along, he simply had to be theirs.

All of which helps to explain why, in May 2017, Real agreed to pay £38.7m for a teenager who had played only 17 minutes of senior football. It was an extraordinary fee for an extraordinary talent, and a notable triumph for Pérez in his never-ending war with Barcelona, who also wanted Vinicius for themselves.

Five years later, that skinny kid - who still had braces on his teeth when he became a £40m player - is now becoming the star that Real hoped he would be. Saturday’s Champions League final against Liverpool marks the biggest moment of his career, at the end of the best season of his life: he has registered 21 goals and 20 assists, and he played crucial roles in the victories over Manchester City and Chelsea in previous rounds.

It was a measure of the Brazilian’s talent when, in the semi-final against City, he sent Pep Guardiola into a state of despair with a single shimmy of his hips. As Vinicius produced a dummied nutmeg on City’s Fernandinho, Guardiola threw his hands to his head and then sank to his knees on the touchline. At that point the ball was still on the halfway line, but the City manager knew what was coming. Vinicius scored a few seconds later.

For Real, a club so accustomed to buying ready-made players for the here and now, Vinicius is a success story that has been years in the making. They had to fight for him when he was emerging at Flamengo, and they were willing to invest an enormous amount of time and money in the race for his signature.

In the end, Real unleashed upon Vinicius the most aggressive sales pitch imaginable, promising the player and his family the ultimate support on and off the pitch. The financial package was enormous, and Real were so insistent that it eventually became impossible to say no.

As one source close to the process explained it to Telegraph Sport, even if Real could not keep all of these outlandish promises, the fact they were making them was proof of how desperately they wanted Vinicius. And even if he did not go on to make it at Real, the money was so significant that it would change the lives of his entire family forever.

And so Vinicius chose Real over everyone else, and Pérez suddenly had the man - or, to be more accurate, the boy - who he hoped would one day become Real’s Neymar, or even their Messi, a South American forward who emerges as a youngster in the first team and then grows into the finest footballer in the world.

There might, however, have been another destination for Vinicius. The first club to make contact with the player’s representatives, shortly before the wider footballing world became aware of his talent, was not Real or Barcelona. As fate would have it, it was Liverpool. Their South American scout got in touch to explore the possibility of a quick and cheap deal, prior to Vinicius playing in the 2017 South American Under-17 Championship.

The scout’s thinking, Telegraph Sport understands, was that this was the perfect time for Liverpool to make a move. Once Vinicius played at the U17 tournament, in front of the watching world, the price would surely rise and the chance would be gone. He was proven emphatically right: Vinicius ended the championship as the top scorer and was voted best player as Brazil won the competition.

The subsequent move to Real changed the nature of the transfer market in Brazil. The best talents are now bought so early, for so much money, that they hardly play senior football in their own country. Real have continued to take this approach, signing Rodrygo Goes (scorer of two goals against City) from Santos for around £40m in 2018, aged 17. In 2020, they signed 18-year-old Reinier from Flamengo for £26m.

Of all the young players to be plucked from South America in recent years, though, it is Vinicius who stands out. This has been a breakthrough campaign for the winger, who had a patchy start to his senior Madrid career but is now one of the game’s most devastating attackers. Karim Benzema, his team-mate at Real, this week described the 21-year-old as being in the top five players in world football.

It was high praise from Benzema, and proof of how quickly Vinicius has developed. Only last season, Benzema was heard telling a team-mate at half-time: “Don’t give it to him [Vinicius], it is like he is playing against us.”

What changed this season? Part of it is mental maturity and “Vini”, as he is known, has also built a powerful, muscular frame. He has a personal chef and a private physiotherapist working for the entire family, all of whom moved with him to Madrid, and his approach is described as ultra-professional.

There is also the role played by Carlo Ancelotti. One of the great man-managers of world football has got inside the player’s head this season, filling him with a confidence that had occasionally been missing before. Ancelotti believes in Vinicius, and now the player believes in himself too.

It would be easy to paint Real’s failure to sign Kylian Mbappé from Paris Saint-Germain as encouraging news for Vinicius. The plan that had been communicated to the player, though, was that Real wanted to deploy Mbappé and Benzema in a two-man attack, with Vinicius on the left of their midfield. They thought Mbappé would bring even more out of their existing attackers, and that Vinicius would go up another level with the Frenchman alongside him.

Unfortunately for Pérez, Mbappé became the latest player to slip through his grasp. Real’s president has been stung again, although he can at least console himself with the brilliance of Vinicius, the prospect who became the club’s grand project, the gangly teenager who became one of the world’s most exciting players. Liverpool knew all about him all those years ago, and they will know all about the threat he poses this weekend.